Staff Software Engineer, Technical Lead
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Job Location:
San Francisco, CA - USA
Monthly Salary:
Not Disclosed
Posted on:
30+ days ago
Vacancies:
1 Vacancy
Job Summary
Chef Robotics is accelerating the deployment of intelligent machines in the physical world starting with food productiona sector facing the largest labor shortage in the U.S. with 1.14M unfilled jobs today and 3.1M projected by 2030. These roles cannot be offshored making robotics essential to keeping production onshore and strengthening Americas manufacturing base. Backed by investors like Kleiner Perkins Construct Bloomberg Beta and Promus Ventures and supported by a world-class team from companies such as Cruise Zoox Google Tesla and Amazon Robotics Chef is rapidly scaling with multiple multi-year contracts and a mission to put an intelligent robot in every commercial kitchen.
About the Role
Were seeking a Staff Software Engineer to provide hands-on technical leadership for the core software platform that powers our production robotic systems. This role owns the on-robot software stack end to end from Linux-based platform software and robotics middleware through fleet management deployment and cloud connectivity.
Youll work across software and data engineering partnering closely with Autonomy Hardware Product and Field Operations to deliver production-ready robotic systems for Tier 1 food production customers.
Technical Architecture & Platform Leadership
- Define and evolve the architecture for on-robot software including OS configuration hardware abstraction middleware and system services
- Lead middleware architecture decisions for real-time robot control sensor integration and inter-process communication
- Establish patterns for full-stack development connecting on-robot systems to cloud services and web interfaces
Hands-On Engineering
- Write production code for high-impact features across the stack: robotics middleware backend services and cloud infrastructure
- Lead critical technical initiatives including robotic platform software cloud data pipelines and fleet management platform
- Build robust deployment monitoring and OTA update systems for production robot fleets
- Debug the most challenging issues from kernel/driver level through the application layer
Engineering Excellence & Mentorship
- Establish engineering standards and processes that balance rigor with startup agility
- Champion reliability observability and testing practices across embedded and cloud systems
- Mentor engineers through code reviews design discussions and pairing sessions
- Collaborate with Hardware and Autonomy teams on system integration and performance optimization
- Build and maintain internal and developer tooling that acts as a force multiplier across the organization
Required Qualification
- 8 years of software engineering with 3 years in technical leadership roles
- Track record delivering production robotic systems IoT devices or autonomous systems at scale
- Experience designing reliable systems for B2B/enterprise deployments
- On-device platform expertise: OS configuration device drivers system services networking stack configuration
- Robotics middleware: ROS/ROS2 real-time systems sensor integration
- Infrastructure: Containerization (Docker/K8s) CI/CD pipelines monitoring/observability
Nice to have
- Collaborative robots (Universal Robots UR5E or similar cobots)
- Over-the-air update systems and remote device management at scale
- Background in manufacturing/production environments
- Track record at high-growth hardware/robotics startups
- Cloud experience: AWS/GCP/Azure
- Full-stack development: Backend services (Python/C) APIs database design web interfaces
$140000 - $240000 a year
Chef is an early-stage startup where equity is a major part of the compensation package. Our salary ranges are determined by role level and location. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position. Within the range individual pay is determined by additional factors including job-related skills experience and relevant education or training.
In addition to salary and early-stage equity we offer a comprehensive benefits package that includes medical dental and vision insurance commuter benefits flexible paid time off (PTO) catered lunch and 401(k) matching.
We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process such as reviewing applications analyzing resumes or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed please contact us.
Required Experience:
Staff IC
Key Skills
- Campaigns
- JSP
- Dhtml
- Loans
- Automobile
